Ecological forecasting tools for animal movement management at the Yukon-to-Yellowstone migration corridor
Gil Bohrer, Ohio State University, bohrer.17@osu.edu (Presenter)
Sarah Davidson, Ohio State University, sdavidson@orn.mpg.de
Justine Missik, Ohio State University, missik.2@osu.edu
Roland Kays, NC State University, rwkays@ncsu.edu
John Fieberg, University of Minnesota, jfieberg@umn.edu
Ashley Lohr, NC Museum of Natural Sciences, ashley.lohr@naturalsciences.org
Nilanjan Chatterjee, University of Minnesota, nchatter@umn.edu
Andrea Koelzsch, Max Planck Institute for Animal Behavior, akoelzsch@ab.mpg.de
Madeline Scyphers, Ohio State University, scyphers.3@osu.edu
Martin Wikelski, Max Planck Institute for Animal Behavior, wikelski@ab.mpg.de
Allicia Kelly, Goverment of Northwest Territories, allicia_kelly@gov.nt.ca
Mike Suitor, Environment Yukon, mike.suitor@yukon.ca
The Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Corridor (Y2Y) is North America's largest nature corridor and connectivity project for wildlife. The 2,000-mile swath of land between the Yukon of Canada and Wyoming is one of the last remaining intact mountain ecosystems on Earth, and home to many endangered and at-risk species. The Y2Y is a mosaic of protected and unprotected land including Canadian and US national/state/province/territory parks, federally/state managed wildland and national forests, Indigenous territories, and privately managed conservation easements. Our project is developing tools to study the effectiveness of protected areas, and migration and movement connectivity for wildlife.
Wildlife tracking data collected through GPS, satellite, and radio telemetry by our end users in the Y2Y are harmonized in a collaborative archive on Movebank. This platform supports secure data sharing and large-scale analyses that address critical research questions in support of wildlife management efforts in the region. Working with our end users, we have developed an array of code-free movement data preparation, analysis, and research tools using the MoveApps platform, a serverless, GUI-based environment linked to Movebank for data analysis tools and workflows. New data integration tools facilitate the analysis of movements in relation to contextual environmental data from remote sensing and weather resources, and additional local environmental data layers. Options for automated, near-real-time processing and alerts support daily operations for wildlife managers. We developed MoveApps tools to detect and quantify events of interest, particularly road crossings, ungulate parturition events, and carnivore kill clusters, and to combine remote sensing and movement tracks data in habitat and population modeling. Additionally, we have developed a new visualization software package, ECODATA, to explore movement data by animating it with contextual land management GIS layers, and static and dynamic environmental data layers from remote sensing and weather models. Our end users have started testing and applying the newly developed tools to answer local wildlife management and conservation questions.
Associated Project(s):
Poster Location ID: 2-17
Presentation Type: Poster
Session: Poster Session 2
Session Date: Wed (May 10) 5:15-7:15 PM
CCE Program: BDEC